Mele has proposed an explanation of why manipulation eliminates moral responsibility, what he has dubbed the radical reversal suggestion. Elaborating, the suggestion is:
Most lay readers of Beth’s story would suppose that (at least prior to her radical transformation) she was a morally responsible agent and that she was morally responsible, at least to a significant extent, for having the character – or collection of values – she had. I suppose this too. Indeed, I make this a feature of the story. Given this feature, a more interesting and attractive suggestion is ready to hand: Beth’s pre-transformation character was sufficiently good that killing [Frank] was not even an option for
her; and the combination of this fact with the fact that Beth was morally responsible (to some
significant degree) for that character, facts about her history that account for her moral responsibility for that character, and the facts that account for her killing [Frank] suffices for her not being morally responsible for killing him. When I ask myself why my gut reaction to Beth’s story (insofar as I can have a gut reaction to it) is what it is, these are the considerations that loom large. (Emphasis Mele’s)77
I have reproduced Mele’s quote in full because I am uncertain of my interpretation of this passage and do not wish to be seen as offering an uncharitable reading. I believe that Mele is pointing to two different sets of descriptive facts to explain why locally manipulated agents are not morally responsible. One set is the collection of facts regarding Beth’s history, which include the facts about her old character, the fact she was manipulated, and facts about her new character and how it figures into the murder of Frank. The second
76 A similar point is made in Gary Watson, "Reason and Responsibility," Ethics 111, no. 2 (2001): 386. 77
collection of facts Mele cites refers to the contrast between Beth’s pre-manipulation nature and post-manipulation nature. The second set of facts account for the radical reversal aspect of the manipulation. Judging from Mele’s use of emphasis, a manipulative reversal of someone’s character is radical when, with their new character, the manipulated agent is willing to perform actions that would not have been an option for them with their pre- manipulated character. According to Mele, what explains the intuitions in manipulation cases is that the newly engineered characters are radically different to the recently removed characters.
Mele’s explanation is appealing, and is consonant with intuitions with other cases he presents. Imagine that Dennis and Dee are ordinary human beings who have been allocated a sizeable fortune from their mother’s will. Dee was disliked by her mother, so the will is set up such that Dee will only receive her portion once Dennis has passed, provided that Dennis has not spent the entirety of the allotment. Dee believes it is wrong for her to murder Dennis, but does so for financial gain. Now imagine that Beth, who used to be kind-hearted but has been manipulated to endorse all of Chuck’s psychopathic values, is also in the same position as Dee with respect to her brother Frank. Beth believes it is wrong to kill for
financial gains, but due to her manipulation, she is glad for the opportunity to murder Frank. Dee and Beth both satisfy a large set of strict compatibilist control conditions.
Additionally, imagine a being Mele called a minuteling. A minuteling is a cloned human being that has been unconscious for years, and has a bunch of pseudo-memories that match the original’s memories. Limits of the technology mean that a minuteling can only survive for a minute.78 A minuteling Mac is brought to life to examine what the real Mac would do, as Mac’s brother Charlie has also received financial priority in their mother’s will. Minuteling
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Mac finds himself in the same circumstances as Dee and Beth, with respect to his minuteling brother Charlie (who he falsely remembers and believes to be his actual non-minuteling brother). Though he knows it is wrong, Mac murders Charlie. Furthermore, minuteling Mac exercises the exact degree of compatibilist control that Dee and Beth have.
Mele believes that Dee is responsible for the murder she commits, that Beth is not, and that neither of these beliefs commits him to a claim about the responsibility or non-
responsibility of Mac.79 Dee is responsible because she has the right kind of history and her action conforms to the kind of person she is. Beth however, has been radically reversed so Mele thinks she is not responsible. Minuteling Mac’s act of murder is not at odds with who he ‘really’ is, so Mele is able to either claim that he is responsible for his act, or he can fish around for another reason to say Mac is not responsible.80 That the radical reversal suggestion can account for these varied cases is a credit to the view.
Mele’s argument is that facts about Beth’s history as well as her reversal of character are sufficient for Beth deserving no blame for the murder she undertakes. However, I cannot understand why someone with historical compatibilist sympathies would agree that these two conditions are jointly sufficient. I believe that it can be seen that the radical reversal of character condition is redundant, and that historical compatibilists will have to rely on Beth’s history of manipulation to carry all of the intuitive weight of their argument. Suppose that Liz prefers to eat smooth peanut butter to crunchy peanut butter to the point that she rarely opts for a crunchy peanut butter sandwich if the other spread is available. In an effort to boost sales, the crunchy peanut butter lobby hire a neuroscientist to manipulate Liz’s preferences so that she now desires crunchy peanut butter over smooth
79 Ibid., 163-64.
80 I believe our intuitive reaction to beings like minutelings is that they are responsible for what they do. I will
peanut butter. When she next goes to make a sandwich, she reflects on her new
preferences and, despite the availability of smooth peanut butter, she chooses to have a crunchy peanut butter sandwich. Both prior to and after the manipulation, Liz fulfils the correct compatibilist control condition.
If you do not believe Beth freely chose and is responsible for the murder she commits, then for similar reasons, you should not believe that Liz freely chose and is responsible for her lunch decision. It is highly unlikely that Liz would have chosen crunchy peanut butter, had it not been for the manipulation. If one accepts this line of reasoning, then Liz’s case becomes a counterexample to Mele’s radical reversal suggestion. Liz is not radically
reversed, on my analysis of Mele, because prior to the manipulation, there were situations, albeit rare ones, in which Liz would eat a crunchy peanut sandwich. Crunchy peanut butter was an option for Liz both before and after the manipulation, yet we still find that she is not morally responsible for decisions involving her newly implanted pro-attitude.
It is possible that Mele may object to this counterexample on the grounds that murder is an action which is very clearly morally wrong, whereas eating crunchy peanut butter is a morally neutral action and that the difference in the action’s moral status is affecting our intuitions. It could be that our evaluations of the different kind of acts are influencing our judgements of the agent’s responsibility. However, I do not think this reply will succeed. Even if Mele can convincingly argue that Liz is manipulated, yet still responsible, because she performed a neutral act, I do not think this will protect his radical reversal theory from counterexamples. This is because we could put forward a new thought experiment, where a villainous character is manipulated so that they will be more certain to perform very morally wrong actions, though performing these actions was not completely out of the question for their old character. This would be a thought experiment where an agent’s character is
revised, but not radically, and the action they perform is not neutral, thus getting around Mele’s objection. I believe that this thought experiment would show that non-radically revised agents who perform morally wrong actions are also not responsible for what they do.
Both Liz and Beth were intentionally manipulated, so that they would have a set of values that would result in them performing a particular action. It is this fact, and not a fact about the contrast between their new character and their old character, that pumps the intuition that they are not morally responsible for what they do. Though cases of radical reversal may make historical compatibilist intuitions more salient, I do not see why responsibility-
undermining manipulation is restricted only to those cases. Liz’s conservative reversal of character should be regarded as equally responsibility nullifying. For this reason, I reject Mele’s radical reversal suggestion as an explanation of what it is about manipulation cases that disposes us to resist non-historical compatibilism.